A Herculean Task....Genetic Genealogy

I am about to throw in the proverbial towel with my DNA genealogy search.

Honest to goodness I do believe I am related genetically to every white person on the planet!
Can that be?!? lolz

By the size of my pool of matches overall, it does to me.

First off, I have a rather rare mitochondrial footprint.
This is good in a way as it cuts down on the potential matches.
I am a direct match with only 39 other people who have tested in the entire FamilyTreeDNA database.
My mtDNA haplogroup is J*.
It is only found in 12% of native Europeans.

In the Y-DNA J is associated closely with many of the early seafaring civilization in the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, like the Etruscans, the Minoans, etc.  J is also associated with having Jewish roots on either the Y or Mitochondrial side.
There is significant J mitochondrial DNA among Shephardic Jews of the Iberian Peninsula.
So old Sluggy could be a Spanish Jew if you were to go back far enough on my mother's, mother's, mother's side all the way back to our first female.

Since I have only tested the bare minimum markers so far, they have put me as J* and not one of the subclades of J.
But since half of the J's I've been matched with are J21a1(or further subclades of J21a1b or J21a1c)I pretty much know that having more markers tested will result in me being a J21a1, J21a1b or J21a1c.
My matches if I test more markers will decrease to......

J21a1=8 matches
J21a1b=3 matches
J21a1c=7 matches

That's across the entire FTDNA database.
I really should have more markets tested to get a definitive answer on this question.

Of course the problem in researching my mitochondrial DNA is that I haven't gotten very far on this specific line of my ancestors with a paper trail.  This would be my mother's, mother's mother's, etc. line going back to the first female of that line.
I have only gotten back to my 4th Great Grandmother with actual records.  Her maiden surname is SMITH.
Ugh.
Do you know how hard it is to trace someone in America named SMITH?!
Especially a WOMAN named SMITH!?!?

Until the 1800's in the US, woman didn't appear much in public written records.  Until 1850 only the male head of the household was named in census records(everyone else was listed as a tally mark).  If your female ancestor happened to be a widow until then you might find them by name in a census record but otherwise no name.

Before census records usually the only time your female ancestor appeared in an official record was upon their baptism(if they were baptized), upon their marriage(if they married)and upon their death(if their husband predeceased them and they had an estate to leave to their heirs or others).  Occasionally you might find a female ancestor recorded in the sale of land along side her spouse. 

And if you are very lucky, your female ancestor had brushes with the law and wound up in court.  Yes, having a female ancestor who ran afoul of the law and ended up in court and thus in court papers and transcripts is a goldmine to genealogists.  There might even be surviving newspaper articles of the time mentioning her.

So my mitochondrial line ends with a Clarissa or Claudia Smith.  The records don't even agree on her first name.  She began her life in Charlotte County, Virginia in 1802 and departed this life in 1862.  I haven't even gotten past this family line being in Virginia back from wherever they came from to there.  I am pretty sure it was England or thereabouts but when did they arrive?
Was it like most of the other lines on my mother's side of the family that came in the 1600's or 1700's?  Or did they get off the boat in later times?

While my mtDNA matches are manageable in number the same can not be said for my Y(through my brother's test)and my Autosomal matches!

Our Y-DNA exact matches number 1000 in the FTDNA data base.  That's FORTY pages of matches....
YIKES!
While further testing of more markers will bring that number of exact matches down, I can't justify spending $350 on having an additional 100 markers tested right now.
And then there are the SNP tests you can take to find your terminal Y.
These are each $39 and since R1b has so many subclades and finding just the right one to test for is pretty much a guessing game now, you could go broke before you found your terminal Y.

Likewise my Autosomal(all lines of dna)matches number 921 at the moment and new ones are being added every week as more people take this test.
My brother has 966 matches at the moment so I've got a few more than 921 actually.....being full siblings we'd match ALL the same people, but dna recombines on different parts of the strand for each person, so a few who matched him didn't show the same results for me.

I really need to load up a GEDCOM to FTDNA soon.
That's the thing I hate most when someone emails me that we are genetic cousins......when they don't have any sort of family tree listed on the site and expect me to be able to figure out how we are related specifically.
No, I am not doing the work for you!
I have been a bad, bad genetic cousin not supplying anything other than family surnames on my profile.....

Just last week I got an email from someone who was matched with my in an autosomal DNA test, wanting to know if I knew how we were related.  We had a surname in common--Chappell--and her Chappell ancestor she knew married a James Gay and their daughter lived in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada (1827-1910).
Since I have no direct ancestors who lived in Canada(as far as I have found)and my Chappell ancestor lived 1723-1797 I told her I suspect the Chappell connection, if that IS our connection, would go a bit further back in time from 1827.  She didn't know any places or dates of your Chappell ancestor other than being the mother of Elizabeth Gay.
I don't understand people who have a scrap of information and then expect me to have this ancestor of theirs on my line, when it's not a direct ancestor of mine.
I come across folks like this all. the. time.

I let her know that my Chappell connections were from Virginia and it might be possible that her Chappells may have been of my VA ones but went to Canada after the revolution(which is what many Loyalists did or had to do after the American Revolution).  She said she did have Virginia as a location somewhere in her tree but since she didn't have any GEDCOM family tree information uploaded to FTDNA I couldn't investigate on her side any further.
I did send her a link to my family tree on Ancestry so once she does some more digging on her Chappell line she can see if any of it lines up with mine. 
That's the best I can do to aid her search for now.

So I have on one side a very narrow focus but not much of a paper trail to help and on the other side so many genetic matches it's just too much to consider.

When it comes to genetic genealogy it's just always something. 

Sluggy

 

My Genealogy Tests Came Back

My mitochondrial DNA test results, or mtDNA,  came back last Sunday night.
That's the test that delves into your maternal genes or your X side of the chromosomes.

It can tell you where in the world your mother's, mother's, mother's, etc. to your first female ancestor, where their DNA originated.

This geographic region and pattern of migration is called your Haplogroup.
You can be tested for both your mtDNA haplogroup and your Y-DNA haplogroup, which is the DNA from your father's, father's, father's, etc. back to your first male ancestor.

While these 2 tests only give you all the way back on your paternal male line and your maternal female line, it's a start to help prove or disprove your paper trail of ancestors.

Since I am female, I can only have my mtDNA tested, as I don't carry a Y chromosome.  To get my Y-DNA tested I need to have a male relative, either a brother, father, uncle or grandfather on my paternal side of the family tested too.  Having my sons tested won't help, as they carry their father's Y-DNA, not my father's Y-DNA.
I paid for and my only male relative agreed to take the test but he hasn't sent it back yet.  Until he does I won't have a complete picture of the possible Y-DNA information for my genealogy research.

Anyway, back to my mtDNA test results.
Aren't you excited? lolz

My haplogroup is........ J*

Any other Js out there??

About J........it arose from the larger group called JT, and T also broke off and became it's own Haplogroup.

I fellow named Sykes wrote a book a bit ago, in which he says that though we all came from 1 woman, the first "Eve" located somewhere in Africa, the "daughters of Eve" gave rise to the Haplogroups around the world.  These early women each experienced mutations in their mtDNA combined with their migration around the planet gave rise to the differences in humankind around the world.

J or "Jasmine" as Sykes calls her, was a female who lived about 45,000 years ago in the Near East or the Caucasus who developed a mutation in her DNA.  Further mutations occurred in this J Haplogroup at various time frames between 27,000 to 5,800 years later which led to "subclades" or further subgroups of J---- J1a1, J1a2, J1b, J2a, J2b1, J2b2, J2b3.

Haplogroup J mtDNA humans migrated from the Near/East/Caucasus to colonize Europe during the late Paleolithic and Mesolithic eras.

Using the variations in mutations among the J mtDNA persons, scientists have been able to separate the "Jasmines" into 2 groups migrating into Europe---those that took a southerly route via water and the Mediterranean Sea into Europe and those who took the land route through the Balkans and up through central Europe.
My mutations indicate that I am a "Land Route Jasmine" who went to Europe the hard way.
Figures......I seem to do everything the hard way. 8-)
"Jasmines" are associated with and figure prominently into the Neolithic era spread of agriculture, or farming superseding hunting/gathering as a lifestyle around 10,000 years ago.

Distributed over the entire world's population, J Haplogroup has it's highest distribution in the Near East(12%), followed by Europe(11%), the Caucasus(8%), and North Africa(6%).
Within Europe, J Haplogroup is quite low, at only 12% of all native Europeans.

Here is a chart with the breakdown of percentages of Js and it's subclades in Europe.....

J* = Ireland — 12%, England-Wales — 11%, Scotland — 9%, Orkney — 8%, Germany — 7%, Russia (European) — 7%, Iceland — 7%, Austria-Switzerland — 5%, Finland-Estonia — 5%, Spain-Portugal — 4%, France-Italy — 3%

J1a = Austria-Switzerland — 3%

J1b1 = Scotland — 4%

J2 = France-Italy — 2%

J2a = Homogenously spread in Europe. Absent in the nations around the Caucasus. Not known to be found elsewhere.

J2b1 = Virtually absent in Europe. Found in diverse forms in the Near East.

It is theorized that some of the recombinations/mutations among J humans produced higher body temperatures, thus some subgroups of J Haplogroup populations do better in colder climates.
This might help to explain how Js adapted to all that Northern Western European climes like Ireland, Switzerland, and Scandinavian countries and why I like to walk around barefoot in the snow..... ;-)

Medically, Js are thought to be less susceptible to diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.  They have also found that some isolated groups of J populations tend to be longer lived than the general population.
On the other side, Js are MORE susceptible to the HIV virus so if exposed, they are highly likely to develop AIDS and do so rather quickly.
Js are associated with a fairly rare hereditary disease called Leber's hereditary optical neuropathy.
Try saying THAT 10 x real fast!

I saw a study where they are studying how a woman's mtDNA can cause her partner's sperm to lose mobility, making for infertility problems with the couple.  They suspect that women with mtDNA of Haplogroup T may have this condition.  Interesting stuff genetics.......

So what does all this mean?
It just confirms that once again, the evidence comes back to support that I am the whitest woman on the planet! lolz

Anyway, that's my earth shattering genealogical news for today.

Next time I'll enthrall all of y'all with my HVR1 and HVR2 mutations.
I know you can't wait!! ;-)

Until then, enjoy this silly video....



Sluggy